{"id":8048,"date":"2015-06-05T21:37:19","date_gmt":"2015-06-06T02:37:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/?p=8048"},"modified":"2015-06-14T14:17:33","modified_gmt":"2015-06-14T19:17:33","slug":"feminists-and-anti-feminists-the-curious-case-of-conservative-religious-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2015\/06\/05\/feminists-and-anti-feminists-the-curious-case-of-conservative-religious-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Feminists and anti-feminists: The Curious Case of Conservative Religious Women"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"KelsyBurke.SpringHeadshot\"<\/a>Kelsy Burke<\/a> is an assistant professor of sociology at St. Norbert College. Her first book is <\/em>Christians Under Covers: Evangelicals and Sexual Pleasure on the Internet (forthcoming, University of California Press).\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The #DuggarScandal<\/a> is rising once again to the top of media headlines as Jim Bob, the father of Josh who molested his sisters and other underage girls, explained away the incidents of sexual abuse in an interview with Fox News. \u201cThey didn\u2019t even know he had done it,\u201d he said about Josh \u201ctouching\u201d his daughters after they were asleep.<\/p>\n

CJ Pascoe and Sara Diefendorf explained earlier this week in another Girl w\/ Pen post<\/a> the rationale used by religious conservatives like the Duggars to make sense of sexual scandals. For these Christians, sexual sin is an expected and, as Jim Bob\u2019s interview reveals, forgivable offense. Importantly, and outrageously, the sin of sexual abuse may be equivalent to the sin of consensual sex before marriage, pornography use, or masturbation. And while the liberal pundits may cry GOTCHA! in exposing the hypocrisy of fundamentalist families like the Duggars, their beliefs rely on a logic that does not see sexual sin as hypocritical, but rather as inevitable. All of us are sinners.<\/p>\n

The long, long list of conservative Christian leaders caught in a sexual scandal is nearly all men (here<\/a> is a story that details some recent examples). Not surprising, the critical-thinking feminist may observe, given that conservative Christian traditions believe in men\u2019s headship and women\u2019s submission. As one blogger described<\/a>, the Quiverful movement of which the Duggars belong demands that women \u201cnever exercise a moment of sexual agency in her entire life.\u201d Conservative Christian men may be hypocrites, but conservative Christian women are the victims or at least the dupes.<\/p>\n

To be sure, the girls abused by Josh Duggar are<\/em> victims of sexual assault. They did not choose it or deserve it. But let\u2019s think for a moment, feminist readership, about the implication of the attitude that conservative Christian women have no<\/em> agency or an ability to make choices on their own terms. (To be precise, the blog quoted above surmises that the Quiverful movement itself bars women\u2019s agency, but even this isn\u2019t an entirely fair assessment<\/a>.) When feminist commentary on conservative religion deals almost exclusively with women\u2019s victimization, we are left to believe that religious women indeed don\u2019t have any agency. Is a feminist dismissal of conservative religious women actually endorsing the attitude of Jim Bob that these women don\u2019t know any better?<\/p>\n

What would happen if we acknowledged that women may make choices and feel empowered by them even if those choices seem to defy feminist logic? What would happen if we reimagined the plot lines in the typical feminist narrative of conservative Christianity? Instead of women as dupes or victims for believing in a patriarchal religion, how might these religions serve a purpose in these women\u2019s lives?<\/p>\n

Many scholarly accounts<\/a> of conservative religious women suggest that they find some aspect of their religion to be empowering, all while believing they should submit to men. One of my favorite examples of this is a study of evangelical women who are married to \u201cex-gay\u201d men (men who admit to, though do not necessarily act upon, same-sex attraction). Through interviews with these women, sociologist Michelle Wolkomir<\/a> finds that they at first blame themselves for their inability to sexually entice their husbands. Yet Wolkomir finds that women overcome this guilt as they realize that their husbands are engaging in sin. This means that their wives are no longer obligated to submit to their husbands, but rather only to submit to God.<\/p>\n

Evangelical women married to ex-gay men are certainly a small group, but the lesson here is far reaching: In patriarchal religions, God is the ultimate patriarch. Especially for religions in the Protestant tradition, women believe they connect directly with the final authority, the one who is In Charge. Converting to Christianity has the power to help women feel more, not less, in control of their lives: to have the strength to speak up to a cruel co-worker or to be optimistic about a recent divorce. Conservative Christianity may not change women\u2019s life\u2019s circumstances, but it can help women change their perception of those circumstances.<\/p>\n

A common feminist mantra on the choices of other women, in the words of Amy Poehler in her book, Yes Please<\/em>, is \u201cGood for you, but not for me.\u201d Yet feminists commenting on stories like the Josh Duggar scandal are quick to point to Christianity\u2019s flaws, never its virtues for some of its followers. Women who are complicit in religions that appear to many feminists as anti-feminist seem to cross a line that has no defense. But why can\u2019t feminists take up the attitude, \u201cGood for you, but not for me.\u201d? Of course there are obvious answers to this question: because these religions perpetuate ideas about gender and sexuality that harm us, especially women and queers. Gender-based violence, though, is a social problem that is not limited to fundamentalist Christianity. And don\u2019t we live in a world where nearly all dominant ideas about gender and sexuality harm us? How can we defend Miley Cyrus<\/a> and Kim Kardashian<\/a> and nail art<\/a> and not at least acknowledge that for some women, conservative religions are \u201cgood for you, but not for me.\u201d? We may learn from these women that we all must make our own choices in a world that tries to limit them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kelsy Burke is an assistant professor of sociology at St. Norbert College. Her first book is Christians Under Covers: Evangelicals and Sexual Pleasure on the Internet (forthcoming, University of California Press).\u00a0 The #DuggarScandal is rising once again to the top of media headlines as Jim Bob, the father of Josh who molested his sisters and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1923,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37840,1],"tags":[2269,31425,721,31154,31428,523,42,3830,176],"class_list":["post-8048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-god","category-uncategorized","tag-agency","tag-christianity","tag-conservative","tag-dugger","tag-ex-gay","tag-popular-culture","tag-religion","tag-sexual-abuse","tag-sexuality"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1923"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8048"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8051,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8048\/revisions\/8051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}